Southland
Blenheim
Wellington: Members making a noise outside Health NZ headquarters
Anne Marie Frew prescribing nurse
Bee Rutledge community nurse
NZNO president Anne Daniels
NZCTU boss
Health worker Mary-Anne
Auckland — early
It’s still dark on Wednesday morning but Auckland registered nurse Dawn Barrett is preparing for a big day.
It’s the calm before the storm — and, she says, there’s even fine weather Auckland.
Tōpūtanga Tapuhi Kaitiaki o Aotearoa New Zealand Nurses Organisation (NZNO) members turned out in force on Wednesday around Aotearoa as a 24-hour strike launched.
Barrett, who works at Greenlane Clinical Centre said nurses, quite simply, were tired.
“Essentially we’ve had austerity measures . . . on the health system where they want to cut back the spending by a great deal . . . and I understand it’s even a bigger aspiration for next year.”
Barrett would be joining the members gathering in central Auckland for a march to Aotea Square later that day.
These members faced more workload, less resources, and were “slammed constantly”, she said.
Hospitals were being run on goodwill — with a continual chipping away of staffing to save money.
“It’s just become impossible to keep giving this goodwill. We’re running out of steam.”
09.00 — Kenepuru hospital
Members are gathering outside this community hospital in Porirua, north of Wellington.
They’re a small staff, but about 40-odd show up with placards and flags in a bitter wind on Raiha St.
One of them is RN Yvonne Coughey who works in the hospital and speaks over the beeps of passing cars.
She’s there, she says, because she wants safe staffing — and this means safety for patients. “That’s the most important thing.”
Working unpaid overtime, stretching shifts out by hours, missing study days because of staff shortages, and missing lunch breaks – nurses did it because they wanted the best for their patients, she said.
Relying on this goodwill simply wasn’t fair, Coughey said.
At a glance
- From Wednesday to Thursday, 36,000 Te Whatu Ora nurses, health-care assistants and midwives went on strike for safe staffing and patient safety for 24 hours.
- Pickets, marches and other events launched around the country as health-care staff walked off the floor at 9am in Aotearoa’s hospitals.
- Members voted to strike following a Te Whatu Ora offer considered worse than its previously-rejected May offer, and no new offer from Monday’s mediation.
- It comes as new nursing graduates, and 2024 graduates, face a job shortage in hospitals — only 45 per cent matched with work in the mid-year Advanced Choice of Employment (ACE) programme.
10.00 — Wellington
It’s Molesworth St — the one with Parliament and The Beehive on it, but down the very end there’s an “ivory tower”.
Porirua community health nurse Bee Rutledge is standing outside Te Whatu Ora headquarters, with hundreds of NZNO members and supporters, speaking via loudhailer to the people upstairs.
Walk down nearby Lambton Quay and you’ll find every single person wanting a pay rise if you asked them, she says to the crowd.
“I stand here, hand on heart, saying I don’t want more pay — I want more staff.”
At the end of the day, she said, understaffing was “unethical, unacceptable and unsafe”.
“You’re in there in your ivory towers, sitting there sipping your mochaccino — it’s unacceptable”.
Rutledge was one of hundreds who joined the march that drew in members from around the region to bring their message to Molesworth.
People in the community should know that when they went to hospital they get timely, efficient treatment — not discharged only to have to return a few days later, Rutledge said.
10.30 — Invercargill
There’s a coffin here. It has a skeleton on it.
Southland strikers are marching and noisy and they’ve put in the hard yards coming up with placards for strike day.
Delegate and Te Runanga member Charleen Waddell says there’s purple caped crusaders on the picket, and someone made a coffin for the day.
Emblem of the dire state of the health system, skeleton Arthur Healthcare is sitting on it, she says.
“It’s a good vibe, everyone’s come out — we left the hospital and we walked down to our green space where we are. Our firefighters came out and made sure the roads are safe for us.”
It was all about safe staffing, she said. “We need staff. We need the colleagues alongside us.”
11.00 — Auckland, again
The noise from the crowd in central Auckland is nearly deafening.
The vibe, delegate Liandra Conradie said, was amazing. “Sorry, it’s a bit noisy. We’re about to start our march to Aotea Square. The crowd is massive.”
She was excited and the members were happy to be out and about.
“Our New Zealand whānau deserve better. They deserve nurses that can look after them. They deserve not to wait for . . . six months for an appointment.”
Staff were “100 per cent” being forced to support the system through goodwill, she said. “That’s exactly why we’re on strike today.”
12.30 — Tauranga
NZNO delegate Melissa Jacobsen is in a car — talking before getting some photos sorted and heading back out on the picket from 02.30.
They had an amazing turnout when they walked off the floor at Tauranga hospital that morning.
She walked around all the wards to make sure that patients were safe, and remaining staff were safe, then they all met downstairs to walk outside together.
“It was great. I think it was the largest turnout that I have seen in any of our strikes or pickets . . . I think that we had the largest number that I’ve known of in Tauranga.”
No new offer
The strike came after last-minute mediation held Monday where Health NZ offered no changes to its previous deal.
Ahead of the strike, NZNO chief executive Paul Goulter said Te Whatu Ora refused to meet an urgent claim to recruit roles necessary for safe staffing.
“NZNO has raised concerns about chronic and ongoing staff shortages continually throughout the collective agreement bargaining process which began last September.”
The strike was just the beginning, Goulter said: members at Auckland City Hospital’s Cardiothoracic and Vascular Intensive Care Unit and Whangārei Base Hospital’s Ward 4 were balloting on a week-long redeployment strike next month.
“In Christchurch, also at their request, members are balloting on a two-hour full strike for workers in theatre, the post-anaesthetic care unit and radiology at Christchurch Hospital.”
‘We’re disappointed in you’
Meanwhile a Te Whatu Ora media statement ahead of the strike said the organisation was disappointed NZNO was taking action with a “fair offer” on the table.
“We believe the offer we have made to the union is a fair one given our current financial constraints.”
The statement claimed Te Whatu Ora remain completely committed to safe staffing.